Skip to main content

Review: Mathematical Reasoning A

 For kindergarten I decided to get Mathematical Reasoning Beginnings 1 and 2 just to have as extra practice for our daughter. Mathematical Reasoning A is more for a kindergartener so I use it as more of a confidence builder since our daughter knows everything in the book. Some reasons I like Mathematical Reasoning are because it is colorful, bright, fun and our daughter has really enjoyed doing the math work in it. I decided to keep it in a binder (2 inch) along with Mathematical Reasoning B. I tore out the perforated pages and hole punched them. We use a sheet protector so that we can reuse the pages for more practice and then I can use them for our second child when she’s old enough. 

The booklet starts off very simple with shapes, numbers and colors. I do like that it goes over even and odd because some of the other math books skip this. It also goes over 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc which I find very important because your student will need to understand this for lots of other things like writing stories. The book spiral so it will come back to previous lessons throughout the book. I find that since it is spiral done it allows you to make sure your child hasn’t forgotten any of the lessons. 

Your student will learn addition and subtraction. Even if you haven’t used this particular curriculum in the past Mathematical Reasoning A eases into both of these concepts. There are plenty of pages that go over adding and subtracting so your child will get plenty of practice. One thing I really like is that it goes over fractions. Our math curriculum hasn’t really worked much on fractions nor has it worked on number line usage. Mathematical Reasoning A gives a good amount of work on both of these. 

Some things our daughter finds fun are the pages that teach about using a graph, hours in a clock and counting backwards. Something I do in addition to this workbook is going outside and writing numbers on the driveway. Then our daughter can jump on them while saying the numbers to get more practice with skip counting and counting down. There are also some very simple pages to break up all the math work. Like picking which place a person would go based on what they are wearing or drawing a line segment to match the items with their seasons. 


So would I recommend Mathematical Reasoning A? Most definitely! It is really a lot of fun for kids. The workbook goes over so many different core concepts that a student will need to master for math. Even if you do not homeschool this would be a great book to use to enhance what your child is learning in school, especially if they need a little extra practice in math. I would use this book with a kindergartener but if you are in need of a higher grade Timberdoodle offers Mathematical Reasoning workbooks for a lot of other grades. 

Comments

  1. Sounds like a great fit for your daughter! Thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Geoboards

A fun way to help kids get great hand-eye coordination isn’t with  Geoboards . I love that with these there are 4 boards included so you can use it with multiple students. The rubber bands are different colors and 2 different sizes. The pictures are fun, colorful and you get a bunch of them. My daughter really likes these. For some reason she thinks it’s so funny when the bands pop her. At first I just let her place the bands anywhere to get the idea of how to put them on. Then we started places them just on the white lines in the picture. She always wants to do more than one so I let her do as many pictures as she wants. I do wish there was a blanket picture so she could design her own things. 

Tips & Tricks: Grading

When grading first thing you need to do is check your state laws on homeschool. Some states require you to keep record of your curriculum and and grading while some don’t. I do not have to keep any records or grading. Since I use Timberdoodle they have an awesome online scheduler that I use. It has all the curriculum that we use and in the check boxes I put the grades. At the end of each year I keep the scheduler pages so I have records. Below is how I grade things. I also do not show our daughter the grades or tell her them. I don’t want her to worry about getting a bad grade. When she’s in middle school and high school grades that’s when I’ll start letting her know about grade.  My grading system: Pre-K - 2 Grade: she will not see the grade E: excellent; no extra work needed; 100-90% S: satisfactory; give a little extra work; 89-80% N: needs improvement; give a lot of extra work; 79-0% 3 - 5 Grade: she will only see letter grade if she wants to know her grade A: 100-90%

Tips & Tricks: Class Schedule

How do you make a class schedule? When do you do which subjects? How long do you do a class? Does each day look the same? It is easy to make a homeschool schedule since you can school however you like. Since we use Timberdoodle we have access to their online schedule which over the years has been updated to be an outstanding way to schedule our subjects. If you do not use Timberdoodle I would suggest using Excel. If you know a website that allows you to create a schedule (for free) then let me know in the comments. The first thing I do make our schedule is make a list of all of our items and mark which ones I think will be challenging and which will be easy. Core subjects would be harder than things like STEM and thinking skills. Then I use that list to make another list on what day we will do each item. Making sure that not one day will be to hard or to easy. I like it to be pretty even as well as each day having about the same number of items. Some subjects we do everyday those are E